US stock futures moved higher on Friday as a fresh wave of AI optimism outweighed concerns over oil prices above $100 and a 10-year Treasury yield near 5.1%. Nasdaq 100 futures gained about 145 points, or 0.4%, while S&P 500 and Dow futures added roughly 0.3% each.
Semiconductor and AI infrastructure names led the premarket advance. AMD, Marvell, Cerebras and Intel were up about 2% each, while Nvidia and Tesla edged higher. Meta was little changed but remained on track for a fifth straight weekly gain, its strongest such run since early 2023, and was less than 1% away from a $2 trillion market value.
Akamai surged about 21% after Anthropic committed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on its cloud infrastructure. The agreement could expand by another $9 billion, while Anthropic received warrants tied to as much as 5% of Akamai’s shares. The deal reinforced the view that AI spending is broadening beyond GPUs into CPUs, cloud networks and distributed computing infrastructure.
The bond market remained the main risk for equities. The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.16% on Thursday, its highest level since the global financial crisis, and some market watchers noted it later climbed above 5.20% for the first time in 19 years. Yields eased slightly by Friday. BlackRock’s Rick Rieder called the bond sell-off “not a crisis but an eye-opener,” while Richard Reyle of Questar Capital Partners warned that further yield increases would be negative for stocks and suggested the Federal Reserve is not done raising rates this year. Markets assigned about a 71% probability to another quarter-point Fed hike in October.
Oil prices pulled back as Middle East tensions showed signs of easing. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to around $92 a barrel, while Brent traded near $98 after a Reuters report said the United States and Iran were in talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Energy stocks including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum slipped in premarket trading. US gas prices remained near $4.50 a gallon on average.
On the geopolitical front, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up his White House visit with no major new trade agreements announced. The summit produced a two-month extension of the US-China trade truce, pushing its expiry to January 10, but tariffs, rare-earth supplies, technology restrictions and agricultural purchases remained unresolved.
For crypto markets, the broader macro backdrop matters because sustained high Treasury yields, elevated oil prices and the possibility of another Federal Reserve rate hike can reduce risk appetite for digital assets, even as equity futures point higher.
